


Escargots

by Nary



Category: Benjamin January Mysteries - Barbara Hambly
Genre: Case Fic, Character(s) of Color, Chromatic Yuletide, French Food, Gen, Historical, Mystery, New Orleans, POV Female Character, Poison, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-13
Updated: 2014-12-13
Packaged: 2018-03-01 06:43:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2763506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nary/pseuds/Nary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose was not one to offer platitudes for a man she hadn't known, to a man who hadn't cared about him.  "What killed him?" she asked instead, for she couldn't think of any reason why Shaw would be telling her about this if it had been a natural death.</p><p>"Poison's our best guess."  He paused, as if considering how to most gently say what was coming next.  "He took his final meal at the Hotel Iberville last night.  So as you might imagine, I got a pressin' need to speak with your nephew, Gabriel Corbier."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Escargots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gehayi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gehayi/gifts).



Rose had just finished nursing Baby John and was settling him down for a mid-morning nap when Zizi-Marie came up to tell her Lieutenant Abishag Shaw was downstairs, waiting to speak with her.  "What's the matter?" she asked, knowing that it was unlikely to be good news that brought the police to her home. With Ben away in Washington, it probably wasn't that Shaw needed his help with a case, and the Kaintuck policeman wasn't the type to pay social calls – he didn't normally have the time.  That didn't leave many options.

"He asked if Gabriel was home," Zizi-Marie said, and bit her lip.  "Why would he be asking about him?"

"I don't know," said Rose, putting a hand on the girl's shoulder to reassure her.  "What did you tell him?"

"Only that my brother went out after breakfast, and we don’t expect him back until late in the evening, since he'll be at the hotel until past dinner."  Gabriel was serving an apprenticeship at the Hotel Iberville, learning the art of fine French cuisine from the chef there, a plan which the family hoped would be beneficial to the fifteen-year-old in the long-term, even if now all it paid in was the occasional leftovers he brought home.  "Was that the right thing to say?"  Zizi-Marie had limited experience dealing with the authorities, and limited trust for them as well.

"That's fine," Rose told her.  "I'll speak with Lieutenant Shaw and find out what's going on."

The lanky policeman stood like a scarecrow in the parlor, evidently unwilling to sit down until invited by the lady of the house.  "Good morning, Mrs Janvier," he said politely.  "Is your husband still out of town?"

"Yes, he is," said Rose.  She had last received a letter from Ben a week ago, but it hadn't indicated when he might be able to return to New Orleans.  It sounded as though he was quite caught up in a difficult situation in the nation's capital, and if she knew her husband, he wouldn't leave until he'd solved the case to the best of his abilities.  "Perhaps I might be of some assistance to you, though?"

"I'm hopin' so, ma'am," Shaw said.  He accepted her offer of coffee and a seat, and finally began to explain what had happened.  "You know a gentleman by the name of Jerome Audemars?"  He pronounced the French surname unusually well for an American.

"It's familiar," Rose said.  "I believe he owns a number of properties around the docks, as well as a fleet of steamboats."  She left out his reputation as a greedy, grasping opportunist who would have sold his own mother for the latest, most powerful steam engine.

"That's the feller."  Shaw looked around as if he'd like to spit somewhere, but was able to restrain himself in the best room of the house.  "He died in the early hours of this morning."

Rose was not one to offer platitudes for a man she hadn't known, to a man who hadn't cared about him.  "What killed him?" she asked instead, for she couldn't think of any reason why Shaw would be telling her about this if it had been a natural death.

"Poison's our best guess."  He paused, as if considering how to most gently say what was coming next.  "He took his final meal at the Hotel Iberville last night.  So as you might imagine, I got a pressin' need to speak with your nephew, Gabriel Corbier."

Rose went very still, with a cold sense of dread flooding through her, but she needed to know more – such as precisely what the lieutenant and his men were expecting.  "Are you hoping to question Gabriel along with the rest of the kitchen staff?" she asked at last.

"I need to ask him some questions," Shaw said noncommittally.  "Others of the staff we've already spoken to have told us that he was responsible for preparing the snails in garlic butter, which comprised the bulk of the victim's meal.  Myself, I'm not sure why anyone would have a taste for snails, but this feller did – seems he ate a couple dozen of the little bas–beasts," he quickly corrected himself.  Shaw's expression told Rose everything she needed to know about his view on the subject of dining on invertebrates.

"How can you be certain it was a deliberate poisoning and not an accident, or even an unrelated illness that happened to strike after he'd dined?"

"We considered at first whether it might not have been a case of simple food poisoning."  As the weather began to warm up, this was a particular problem in the heat of the city – meat could go rancid between the butcher's shop and the kitchen.  But it was only March, still early to worry about that, and the weather had been on the cool and rainy side lately in any case.  "Asking around, we were able to find a handful of other folks who ate the snails yesterday at the Hotel Iberville, and all of them seem to have come down with a bad stomach ache and a case of the runs, excuse my frankness.  But no one else has died."

"Perhaps no one else ate two dozen escargots at a single sitting," Rose said dryly.  It was Lent, which for the faithful ostensibly meant fasting and exercising restraint in matters of the flesh, but that was about as likely as the Creole men of the city ceasing to visit their coloured plaçées during the forty-day span.  In any case, snails were permitted during Lent, though dousing them in butter was pushing matters a smidge.  "But surely if everyone who ate the same dish became ill, that suggests a natural source is most likely..."

"Or it suggests that the poison was in that dish.  Which your nephew was given responsibility for preparin' for the first time yesterday."  Shaw looked almost pained as he continued.  "A witness said they saw him puttin' some strange herbs in the sauce."

"Strange herbs?"

Shaw shrugged.  "We're not chargin' him with anything yet, Mrs Janvier.  I don't know what it means, other than that I truly need to bring him in and hear his account of what happened.  Can you tell me where he might be?"

Rose shook her head, with that dreadful 'yet' still ringing in her ears.  "Until he goes to the hotel later, I don't know – most days he wouldn't be home until after dark."  It was mostly true – Gabriel was fifteen, and he was free to go where he wanted once he'd finished his chores – making breakfast and cleaning up afterwards, fetching anything that the household needed from the early morning market, and, with Ben away, doing some of the jobs he tended to do as well, like chopping firewood for the oven.  But Rose did have a few ideas she didn't share with the lieutenant.

After Shaw had departed, leaving instructions for Gabriel to report to the Cabildo if he returned home, Rose went to tell her niece what had happened.  "I need you to look after Baby John until I get back," she told Zizi-Marie, who nodded.  "And if Gabriel does come home, hide him where we normally keep our guests."  Zizi-Marie's eyes widened – the secret room behind a false wall was often occupied by fleeing slaves, but right now it was empty, their last 'guests' having departed three days ago to continue their escape north.

Rose first checked whether any guards had been stationed outside their house to keep a watch on those who came and went.  As she’d expected, there was one waiting a discreet distance across the street, but he already looked bored and, as it was just starting to rain again, rather damp and displeased.  Rose stepped back inside, and it was the work of a few moments to change her green tignon for the faded blue one that Zizi-Marie was wearing.  "Sit here by the window for a little while," she instructed her niece.  "Let yourself be seen."

Once she had her decoy in place, Rose wrapped a dark shawl around herself for concealment as well as warmth.  She made her way to the narrower of the two lanes that sat to either side of their home, and waited until a carriage passed, hoping that it would be enough to obscure her departure.  She walked briskly away without running or doing anything that would attract attention, trailing close enough behind a group of young women on their way back from the market that she might be thought to be one of them.  After she turned a couple of corners she slowed her steps, fell back from the group, and waited a moment, trying to tell if she was being followed.  She didn't believe she was.  At a more measured pace, then, she set off for Olympe's house to bring her the news about her son - assuming she wasn't already aware of it.

The Corbier house on Rue Douane was unusually quiet when she arrived.  Normally it would be wide open, with the younger children scurrying in and out, neighborhood women coming to speak with Olympe about how their brother-in-law was in trouble with so-and-so's wife, or their cousin from Laplace was in town and looking for work, asking her advice or seeking her skill at fortune-telling and making gris-gris.  Rose didn't know how much of Olympe's reputation as a voodoo came from her ability to gather information and redistribute it judiciously, and how much might be some arcane talent as yet misunderstood by science, but she knew that her husband's sister was justly respected in her field.  That her door should be closed was a worrying sign.

There was another guard stationed a short way down the street. In case he'd been told to look for a woman wearing spectacles, Rose removed hers, which turned everything into a blur.  She found her way to the door mostly by memory.

Olympe peered out warily, but when she saw it was Rose, she immediately let her in.  "Have you heard about... ?" Rose began, only to have Olympe cut her off with a sharp motion of her hand.

"No need to say his name an' draw eyes down on us," she said.  "I know they lookin' for my oldest boy, sayin' he put poison in the food at that fancy hotel.  Paul took the little ones to Minou's house to play with Charmian, so they wouldn't be here when the police came.  They think I teach him all about which herbs make a man sick an' which make him well, but he only interested in which ones make food taste good."  She shook her head in a mixture of exasperation and affection.  "He ain't got no reason to wanna hurt anyone, specially not anyone where he work – what good would that do him?"

"None," Rose agreed, putting her spectacles back on so that she could see again.  "Maybe he could have accidentally mixed up one herb with another, or turned his attention away long enough that someone else could have slipped something into the meal, but I can't imagine him doing something like this deliberately – not even if someone paid him."  She paused to consider her own words – she and Benjamin were always struggling on the edge of financial ruin, and Gabriel's own father had been out of work for a year now, but even so, she didn't think he would have harmed someone for money.

"What's he gonna mix up that they keep in a kitchen?" Olympe asked sensibly.  "Somethin' that would loosen a man's bowels?"

"I don't know," said Rose.  "Unless he was messing around with lye or the silver polish, I'm hard pressed to think of something that would normally be in a hotel kitchen that could provoke such a reaction.  It might suggest it was something brought in from elsewhere."

"He have any other problems?  There's a lotta things can give a man a sour stomach, but if he had anything else – headache, blurry sight, bleeding in his mouth, say – it could point towards what the poison was."

"That's a good idea," Rose agreed.  "I wish I'd thought to ask Mr Shaw if the victim had any other symptoms.  And if there were any leftovers, I could have analyzed them with my microscope, tested the residue, and perhaps reached some conclusion that way.  Only two years ago, a chemist named Marsh in England developed a marvelous test for arsenic..."

Rose broke off as there was a faint sound – someone entering the house, quietly, from one of the back windows rather than the door.  It was Gabriel, the white linen jacket that he wore for his position at the hotel tucked under his arm so that he wouldn't get it dirty.  Olympe stood at once and moved to embrace her son, who practically matched her in height now.  "I didn't do anything, mama," he was saying, and Olympe assured him that she believed him.

"Come sit, and tell us what happened," she said eventually, keeping her hands on her son's shoulders, and Gabriel did as he was told.

Rose also reached out to put her hand over his.  "We'll get to the bottom of this.  I'm sure there's some reasonable explanation."  She left unsaid that there were times when even a reasonable explanation might not convince the police that a black boy hadn't done anything wrong, when a white man was dead.  She had to believe that Shaw would do right by them, even if some of his colleagues felt differently.  "Start with yesterday – with the escargots."

Gabriel was ashen-faced as he began to speak.  "It was the first time Maître Clouard ever let me make them.  Usually I might chop the parsley and shallots for the sauce, and bring the _petits gris_ in from the cage in the yard to boil them, but he never let me handle the entire dish on my own before.  I was nervous, but I knew I could get it right."

"How closely were you watching the dish, then?"

"I never took my eyes off it!" Gabriel insisted.  "I knew it needed to be perfect, so I couldn't let the butter burn, or the snails cook too long in case they turn chewy.  It's a dish that needs to be assembled quickly, after the snails are ready to be cooked, so there's no way I would have walked away for a few minutes and left it unattended."

Rose nodded, her mind racing with other questions.  "Did you prepare all of the escargots yesterday?"

"Yes, except for the first order at lunch, for Mr and Mrs Mayerling – Maître Clouard did that one, so that I could watch.  I did the double order for Mr Audemars," he added more quietly.  "He always ordered extra.  They were his favorite dish."

If Augustus and Madeleine also got sick, Rose thought, maybe it would be enough to clear Gabriel's name, since he hadn't prepared that meal.  If they were still alive, that was.  She forced herself to take a deep breath and continue questioning her nephew rather than worrying about her friends.  "Would there be any leftovers from yesterday, that I might be able to look at?"

"Escargots don't keep well," Gabriel sighed, "or else I might've brought some home for you and Zizi-Marie.  Everything we cooked, we served, except for one that I tasted to make sure it was all right."

"You tasted one?" Olympe interjected with a mix of motherly concern and a voodooienne's interest in poisons.  "What'd it taste like? Normal?  How you feelin' today, sick to your belly?"

"It tasted fine, I thought," Gabriel said.  "I was tired when I got up today, but that's not that strange – I was up late..."  He gave a slightly guilty look to the aunt under whose roof he was staying, knowing that she must have heard him coming in past curfew.  "I'm feeling a bit queasy now, but I figured it was because I was scared when I heard the police were out searching for me."

"You can hide out here," Olympe told him, fierce with maternal protectiveness.  Rose tried to imagine herself saying something similar to Baby John in another fifteen or twenty years, but it was so far away that it was almost impossible to envision.  She knew, though, the mother's instinct to safeguard and shelter her child no matter what danger it might bring, even if so far there was very little trouble the infant could get himself into.  "I'll make you some chamomile tea to settle your stomach, too, in case it's more than just bein' frightened."

As Olympe went to the kitchen, Rose took the opportunity to continue speaking with Gabriel.  "There was something Lieutenant Shaw mentioned that seemed odd to me.  He said that someone had reported seeing you put some 'strange herbs' in the sauce for the escargots.  Do you have any idea what he could be talking about, or who might have told him such a thing?"

Gabriel frowned.  "There's plenty of folks who are in and out of the kitchen – there's the waiters, Noël and Serge-Yves.  Noel is little and quick, always runnin' here and there, so once in a while he messes up an order an' gets in trouble for it. Serge-Yves is more careful, takes it slower, and he can be lazy if he thinks he can get away with it.  Cuttin' corners, you know? Then there's Delia and Addie, the maids who do the washing up.  I guess they're nice enough – Delia's a flirt, and Addie's a gossip, always spreadin' rumors about this guest or that maid, but she's not mean about it.  Marcelin is the sommelier, takes care of the wine cellar an' all that, an' he doesn't even dip into his own supply.  He's too prissy for that, an' too proud.  Emile is the cuisinier –  I don't like him much," he admitted.  "Then there's Vincent the sous-chef, who's always lookin' for a new job, a place where he can be the head of the kitchen.  And of course there's Maître Clouard.  I guess it could be any of them who spoke to him."

"Did you put anything unusual in the sauce?" Rose pressed him, even though sweat was beading on his forehead and he looked more anxious and unwell than ever.  "You need to tell me, Gabriel."

"It was just tarragon," he whispered.  "It's not the way Maître Clouard makes it, but I knew it would be good, so I decided I'd take the risk of adding it.  I thought that if people liked it, then afterwards I could let him know what I'd added, and he'd see that I've got a talent for cooking – not just for following instructions, but for creating new things!"

Rose stifled a sigh of frustration.  She wished that Gabriel hadn't chosen yesterday, of all days, to experiment with a recipe.  His confidence in his own skill wasn't misplaced – she could attest to that, having been the beneficiary of many excellent meals he'd prepared – but it wasn't going to help his case.  She wondered too about the other workers in the kitchen.  Could there be someone who was jealous of Gabriel's success there, and might wish to see him out of the way?  Even if there was, would such envy be enough reason to risk the lives of so many innocent people – or perhaps simply to try and pin the blame for an accidental poisoning on the boy?  "Is there anyone who might have reason to want to incriminate you?" she asked.

Gabriel's brow furrowed as he considered the question, and its more sinister implications.  "Emile, maybe... he isn't much older than me, and I get the idea he isn't too pleased about me being there, taking attention away from him.  He can be nasty, too.  He said once that Maître Clouard was wasting his time, teaching a nigger to cook – like as if his own grandmother wasn't black," he added with a shrug.  "The others are nice enough folks, as far as I know.  Marcelin's fussy about things being just so, but he never had any reason to complain that I wasn't doing this or that right – besides, I don't have much call to go into the wine cellar.  Delia and Vincent are carryin' on together – once I walked in on them in the pantry together, with his hand up her skirts, but I never said nothing about that to anyone, so I don't think either of them would have it in for me."

Rose made mental notes of the details he provided, in case she had the opportunity to question or observe any of these people later – or even simply to tell Shaw what she'd been able to glean, in the hopes that there might be a clue in there that would help to clear her nephew's name.  "You do as your mother says, and stay here, away from the windows – there's a guard watching the house out front."

"I noticed – so I took the long way around, and came in from the back, over the roof of the Duplessis' garçonnière, on Bienville – you can jump from there to the big tree out back, and then in through the bedroom window.  It's how we would sneak in and out sometimes, me and Zizi-Marie, when we weren't supposed to be going out," he said, lowering his voice as if perhaps his mother didn't know about her children's stealthy comings and goings.  "You could get out the same way, if you have to."

Rose smiled.  "Thank you for the suggestion, but I'm not sure if I'm quite as skilled at climbing trees as you – it's been some time since I had cause to do so."

"I can boost you up," Olympe said as she returned with the cup of tea for her son.  "The branches are low, so it's not too much of a stretch, specially for a tall girl like yourself. "     

"Thank you," Rose said after a moment's consideration.  It was certainly a more subtle option than exiting to Rue Douane again, in full view of the police, even if it might be less dignified.  "I'm going to head next to the Mayerlings' house, on Rue Conti, so emerging onto Bienville would be heading in the right direction.  I need to find out if they're ill."

"If there's a chance they could be, I'll go with you," Olympe said.  "Just let me gather a few supplies, in case they need help.  Even if they seen a white doctor, who's to say he wouldn't just bleed 'em and dose 'em with purgatives that might leave the poor things worse off than they started."  She moved quickly, pulling from her stores various herbs that she wrapped in twists of paper and placed into a carrying bag.

Rose was glad to have her sister-in-law's company and aid, although she worried about leaving Gabriel alone.  The boy looked tired and drawn, his eyelids drooping even as he sipped the tea his mother had made.  Perhaps some sleep in the quiet house would do him good – and keep him out of further trouble, she reflected.  Olympe didn't seem excessively concerned about his state of health, at least, so Rose told herself not to worry about that.  She wondered, perhaps, whether the supposed poison could have been introduced to the dish after it was prepared, for instance by a waiter carrying it to the table.  It would be a risky proposition, as it would be easy to be caught tinkering with a guest's meal, let alone a large number of meals over the course of the day, but nevertheless, she had to consider every possibility.

Once Olympe had made herself ready to leave, and bestowed on Gabriel a mother's embrace and instructions to rest and not go back outside or answer the door, the two women followed the surreptitious path he had described.  As promised, the tree wasn't terribly difficult to climb, especially with another pair of strong arms there to help her reach the first branch and pull herself up.  The tiles of the neighbors' garçonnière roof were slick in the rain, and for one terrifying moment Rose thought she would fall, but instead she slithered down on her bottom and managed to reach the ground in one piece, although with her skirts wet and bedraggled.  Olympe descended with somewhat more grace, and soon the two of them were hurrying to Rue Conti, where the Mayerlings had an elegant town house.

Although it was only two streets over from where the Corbier family dwelled, they were relatively long streets, stretching from the river to St Patrick's cemetery, and the Mayerlings were in a much wealthier area.  The walk took Rose and Olympe only a quarter of an hour, and yet it seemed as if they might be in a different city altogether.

Louis the butler opened the door for them, and greeted Rose as an old friend – as indeed she was, by way of her husband.  Benjamin's aid to the former Madeleine Trepagier, now Madeleine Mayerling, had never been forgotten by the couple or their household, and the Janviers were welcomed there – at least as much as a white Creole lady could welcome a black man and his wife, within the bounds of propriety.  Augustus Mayerling, a Prussian by birth, had fewer compunctions than his wife about the standards of correct behavior as dictated by the French inhabitants of the city, although for her sake he managed to more or less refrain from scandalizing their peers.  Nevertheless, he continued to run his fencing salon, teaching the sons of those same Creole worthies how best to kill one another in their constant duels over minute points of honor.

Rose was relieved to see Augustus hurrying down the stairs to greet them.  "Madame Janvier, Madame Corbier," he said with polite formality.

"Please forgive my rudeness," Rose said briskly, "but are you and your wife both well?"

Mayerling's expression turned grim, the many slender scars on his face seeming to tighten slightly.  "I'm afraid Mrs Mayerling finds herself indisposed this morning."

"Has she seen a doctor?"

"Not yet – she insists it is nothing very serious, and that perhaps something she ate disagreed with her."

"I'm afraid she may be more correct than she knows," Rose said.  "Did you dine at the Hotel Iberville yesterday?"

"Yes, early in the afternoon," he confirmed.  "It's not far from my atelier, and sometimes we meet there for lunch."

"Did you have the escargots?"  Rose clung desperately to the thin thread of hope that the Mayerlings – a more or less respectable white couple – offered if their testimony could aid Gabriel, while at the same time being concerned for Madeleine's well-being.

"My wife ordered them," Augustus said.  "She asked if I would like to share them – she always does – but something about eating glorified slugs seems unwholesome to me, even if they're drowned in butter and herbs.  I had one, just to please her, but she ate the rest."

"Then, unfortunately, it's possible she has been poisoned."  Rose wished a moment after the words were out of her mouth that she'd had the grace to deliver the news more tactfully, but fortunately Mayerling took it about as well as could be expected.

"Why would someone wish to poison her?  Is it one of her late husband's relatives again?"  Augustus referred to the Trepagier family, who were well-known to still harbor a grudge over Madeleine's inheritance and disposal of her first husband's plantation, at a considerable profit to herself and loss to them.

Rose hadn't considered that possibility too seriously – that perhaps there was a specific target intended by the murderer – if in fact there was a murderer at all.  Poisoning a dish that would be consumed by many people seemed like such a risky course of action, and surely there would be easier, more focused ways to eliminate a despised relative or rival.  But it was worth thinking on more, she decided, even as she shook her head to Augustus' question.  "I don't believe so – or in any case, Madeleine wasn't the only victim.  Several people have fallen ill, and one, a man named Jerome Audemars, has unfortunately died."

"You ought to let me have a look at her," Olympe interjected.  "To make sure she'll recover well, and so as to have a look at what's wrong, maybe to figure out what it was that did this to her."

Mayerling hesitated only a moment at the prospect of allowing a known voodooienne to tend to his sick wife.  He doted on Madeleine, and any concern he might have had about Olympe's reputation was drowned out by his worry for his wife's safety.  "Of course, follow me."

Madeleine's bedchamber bore every sign of a sick-room.  Her maid Judith brushed past them, carrying out a covered basin that reeked of vomit, and the lady herself lay in bed, pale and half-asleep.  Olympe went directly to her side and put a hand to her forehead.  Madeleine was too caught in the grip of her illness to object, if she had even wanted to.  Olympe listened to her breathing, felt her pulse, even sniffed at her breath.  "Judith?" Madeleine asked weakly, "is that you? I can hardly see."

"No, lady, it ain't your Judith," Olympe said soothingly.  "But I'm gonna help you get well again."

"It look like oleander," she said at last, when her examination was complete.  "She not seein' well, her heart beat slow an' weak, her hands feel like ice, an' obviously she losin' everything in her guts, one way or th'other."  She turned to Rose and Augustus.  "I seen it before – bad poison, burns the skin if you so much as touch it.  Folk can even get sick even just from breathin' the smoke if you burn the wood.  Someone clearing land along the river last year had his workers burn the weeds an' grass an' branches they chopped back, and there was a patch of oleander in there.  Five of the men on the work crew, an' another fella, a carpenter who was just walkin' along mindin' his own business, were taken ill same as Mrs Mayerling here, an' two of 'em died - the carpenter, Levasseur, and a young man named Hugo Fanchon, whose mother Martine came to cry on my shoulder about it.  Sometimes a little child will eat a leaf, not knowing it's poison, an' then they usually they die too, bein' so small that a single leaf is enough to kill."

"Can you help her?" Augustus asked.  His face remained stoic, but Rose could see that inside he was being eaten up with anxiety.

Olympe looked grim.  "I could give her belladonna..."

"A poison to counteract a poison?" Rose was intrigued by this proposal, but tried to keep a rein on her curiosity, out of respect for the Mayerlings.

"It speeds up the heart – right now her heart is slow, so it can help balance it out, get her back to normal.  But I don't have to tell you it could be dangerous, even if I only give her a little bit.  It's up to you, Mr Mayerling."

Augustus frowned, weighing his options.  "If she does not have such treatment, what are her chances of survival?"

Olympe could only shrug, her awareness of the fragility of life painfully obvious.  "She healthy, young... she could recover on her own, in a few days, if luck is with her.  Is there any chance she carryin' a baby?"

"None," Augustus said with certainty.

"Well, that's good," Olympe said grimly.  "'Cause she'd most likely lose it if so.  But she only ate a few of the snails.  If she gets plenty to drink – broth, tea, lemonade – an' rests herself until the purging stops, she could be fine.  I think she got good odds, but I don't wanna make you a promise I can't keep."

"Thank you," said Augustus, "for your honest appraisal of my wife' s condition.  I believe that for now, we ought to avoid any risky treatments.  If she grows worse, you could still administer the belladonna later, yes?"

"Yes," Olympe agreed.  "I'll stay here by her side an' keep an eye on her.  But time's a great physician, as they say, an' we can hope that she'll recover all on her own."  Rose suspected that, once her sister-in-law was alone with the sick woman, she would also have her own means of trying to ensure that recovery – prayers or offerings to Baron Samedei, for instance, and a gris-gris to tuck under her pillow to ward off evil – that might be less pleasing to Mr Mayerling, but would be unlikely to do any harm.

Turning to Augustus, she said, "I believe that in order to reach any conclusions about this matter, we will need to visit the Hotel Iberville, and examine the kitchens there."  It was likely to be crawling with police, and even if it wasn’t, a woman of color would be unlikely to be granted permission to poke around.  "Would you be willing to accompany me, and vouch for my presence there?"

Mayerling looked reluctant to leave Madeleine's side, but he knew that what Rose was saying was true.  "Certainly I will take you there," he replied.  "If someone has deliberately poisoned my wife, then I wish to know who it was, and why."  He left unsaid what he would do to such a person, if they were discovered, but there was a barely hidden anger beneath his calm demeanor.  Augustus felt that fighting duels over who had danced with whom at a ball, or in retaliation over minor insults and slights, was ridiculous, but Rose knew that in order to protect or avenge his beloved, he would not hesitate to use his skills with the sword or pistol.  Indeed, as they readied themselves to depart, she noticed that he had acquired both rapier and gun at his belt.

The rain outside was falling harder now, the droplets small and stinging on their faces.  Augustus asked Rose if she would prefer that he call for their chaise, but she replied that readying the horses and waiting for Albert to bring it to them would take longer than it was worth – they could walk to the hotel in a similar length of time.  As they strode along the street, taking what care they could to avoid the muddy puddles that were growing as the rain continued, Augustus gave Rose a sidelong look.  "It is good of you to have such concern for Mrs Mayerling.  But I suspect she's not your sole worry here.  What drew you into this matter, if I may inquire?"

"My nephew, Gabriel," she said reluctantly.  "He works in the kitchen at the hotel, and he's under suspicion for this crime – if in fact it was a crime, and not simply some horrible accident.  I hope that whatever we might be able to learn there could help to clear his name.  You've already helped, to some measure – he told us that the first escargots of the day were prepared by the chef, not by him, and that was the dish that was served to you and your wife."

"That's based on his word, though.  What if what you find only incriminates him further?" Augustus asked with a troubled look in his amber eyes.  "What will you do then?"

"I have no reason to think he's lying to us, or that he's responsible," Rose said slowly, "but if I found some evidence that he had been tricked, or made an error that led to this mess, I would want to know that.  As to what I would do with the information... I'm not certain.  I would want to let Shaw know, so that he wouldn't pursue some innocent person unjustly.  But I might wait to tell him long enough for Gabriel to get out of town," she admitted.  "Benjamin would never forgive me if he returned from his travels to find I'd let his nephew be arrested or hanged."

Augustus nodded, as if he could accept that answer.  "I owe you and your husband a great deal.  You shall have my support, however I can aid you in this matter – whether that means testifying on behalf of your nephew, or assisting him in an escape."

"Thank you," Rose said simply, hoping desperately that it wouldn't come to that.

They arrived at the Hotel Iberville to find, as expected, a pair of guards standing on the stairs that led up to the gallery.  "Hotel's closed," one of them said curtly as Augustus approached.

"My wife was one of those who fell ill after dining here yesterday," Augustus told them, calm and efficient as usual.  "I demand to speak to whoever is in charge of the investigation."

The guards glanced at one another, evidently realizing that if they turned away a potential witness, they'd be in trouble.  "Come with me," the other one said, leading Mayerling and Rose into the building.

The restaurant's dining room sat to the right as they entered.  The tables were laid with elegant white linen and set with silver, but no one was dining there today – it was as empty as a schoolroom during holidays, thought Rose.  No one seemed to question why she was there.  Likely they assumed she was a slave of the Mayerlings, brought to attest to her mistress's condition.  She kept her hands folded and eyes lowered, trying to avoid attracting too much attention to herself.

The guard led them through the hotel and out across the courtyard to the kitchen, which was some distance away from the main structure in order to avoid the prospect of fire.  There were a few other people milling about, despite the rain – a mix of hotel staff, the men easily recognizable in their black suits and white gloves, the women in equally pristine white aprons.  Rose saw Shaw standing at the door of the kitchen, under the overhanging roof, engaged in conversation with a stout middle-aged man in white, whom she suspected by his Parisian accent must be the head chef, Clouard.     

"The boy Gabriel," the chef was saying, "he would have no reason for wishing to do this.  I trusted him to prepare the escargots – it should go without saying I trusted him not to poison our customers!"  He sounded frustrated, as though this conversation had been going on for some time already.

"I understand that," Shaw replied patiently.  "It's just that I've heard from another of your workers that they saw him putting something out of the ordinary in the sauce..."

"What? Who says this?"  The chef's face grew redder and the frown lines of his forehead deepened.

"Adelaide Mounier," said Shaw.  "She didn't know what it was, only that it was green and leafy, like the other herbs."

"Bah, Addie?" Clouard scoffed. "The girl scrubs pots and wrings the necks of chickens – you can't rely on her to know what does or doesn't go in the butter for escargots."

"Captain Tremouille wouldn't like it if I left a tale like that hangin'.  I need to follow up on these things."  Shaw looked harried, as if he'd like to follow up on them somewhere else.  "And if in fact the poison was in the sauce, as seems most likely..."

Augustus took the opportunity to clear his throat.  "Lieutenant Shaw, I need to speak with you, urgently."

Shaw turned, taking in the sight of Rose with a heavily-armed Augustus Mayerling.  "Don't go anywhere," he instructed the chef, and strode over to them, spitting a stream of tobacco into the mud of the yard as he went.  "Mr Mayerling, what can I do for you?"

"My wife," Augustus began, "was among those who were poisoned yesterday."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Shaw said, looking genuinely dismayed.  "Is she...?"

"She's ill, but she should recover in due course," Mayerling answered the unasked question.  "But as a concerned party in this incident, there are two things I believe you need to know.  The first is that, according to a physician who is treating Mrs Mayerling, the poison appears most likely to be oleander."  Probably prudently, he left unsaid the name of the "physician" who had made this diagnosis.

Shaw frowned.  "It's my understanding that oleander tastes foul, not that I ever had the poor sense to taste it – hardly the sort of thing you'd nibble without noticing."

"Nevertheless, that is what we believe to be the cause," Augustus said firmly.  "I also had one of the snails, and I can say that they tasted exactly as unpleasant as usual."

From near the door to the kitchen, the chef harrumphed indignantly.  "Monsieur Mayerling should know I prepared his escargots personally, and they were flawless!"

"That brings us to the second matter I wished to draw to your attention," Augustus continued, ignoring Clouard's protests.  "If your primary suspect played no part in the meal my wife and I consumed, then how was she stricken by the same poison as the others?"

Shaw shot a glance at Rose, as if he knew there was no way she didn't have a hand in this revelation, but having it confirmed by Clouard meant he couldn't dismiss it merely as a story cooked up by a culprit's relative to clear his name.  "If I made it clear that Gabriel Corbier was not being accused of any crime, do you think I might have a chance to speak with the lad personally?"

"It could be arranged," Rose said carefully, "if I were permitted to have a look around the kitchens.  When Shaw looked dubious, she added, "I feel sure that you would grant my husband the same opportunity, if he were here."

Shaw stifled a sigh.  "If ever a couple was made for one another, it's you two.  I can give you a few minutes – with my supervision."

"That will do," Rose said.

The kitchen was not nearly as warm, nor as chaotic, as it would be on a day when it was in full swing. In fact, none of the staff were there, other than Maître Clouard keeping a suspicious eye on them from the door.  Rose was able to have a close look at the area where the food was prepared, the large ovens and the wooden countertop, scrubbed clean but still nicked and grooved by heavy use, the rows of shining copper pots and sharp knives.  Bunches of herbs – rosemary, parsley, thyme, dill – hung from the ceiling, along with ropes of onion and garlic, for the cooks to grab quickly as they were working.  Other supplies were in the larder: sacks of flour and salt, jugs of vinegar and wine, small pots of mustard and wheels of cheese, a crock of butter buried in the ground to keep it cooler – presumably delivered recently, since it wasn't melted yet, although it seemed likely it would go to waste today if the kitchen didn't re-open.

"Is this where Gabriel worked when he was preparing the escargots?" Rose asked, running her hand along the faint scratches in the counter.  "Chopping the herbs?"

"Yes," Maître Clouard confirmed.  "I was not watching him the entire time, I was occupied with making the _confit de canard_ , but I did see him there."

Rose looked around the area, hoping there would be some clue that she could seize on.  "Do you keep tarragon in the kitchen?" she asked, eying the assortment of herbs.  She was a terrible cook, and wasn't certain of her ability to identify it at a glance.

"But of course!" Clouard reached for one of the leafy bunches and showed it to her.  Rose could smell the distinctive aroma even at arm's length – it looked a little like dill, she thought, but with small leaves instead of the more delicate fronds.  "Without it, we could not make Béarnaise sauce, along with many other dishes.  It was difficult to import it from France – you cannot grow it from seeds, only from the roots of a mature plant – but what they call tarragon here is an insult to the true herb.  No flavor."

"Would it be something you'd include in the escargots?"

"Certainly not," Clouard sniffed.  "It would be too overpowering."

Rose turned to Lieutenant Shaw, who was looking a bit lost in this conversation about herbs and French cuisine.  "Gabriel says that he put some tarragon in the escargots, as an... experiment, I suppose.  He thought it would improve the dish.  If someone saw him adding something out of the ordinary, that was probably it."

Clouard looked as if he might have an apoplexy.  "The impudent little wretch! Is this how he repays my teaching?  By adding ingredients as he sees fit?"

Rose worried that she might have cost Gabriel his position, but knew that she had no other choice – better that he lose his job than his freedom or his life.  "As a teacher myself," she said, "there are few things that give me more pride than seeing my pupils experiment with new ways of doing things.  Sometimes the results are surprisingly good.  Then again, I don't have to eat their mistakes," she added with a rueful smile.

The French chef grumbled to himself, throwing the bundle of tarragon onto the floor as he stormed off.

"A fiery temper on that one," Shaw said mildly, picking it up and setting it on the counter.  "But I don't reckon this was an act of rage – it must've been planned ahead.  And I don't think your nephew is the sort to do that either," he added, to Rose's immense relief.

"Then who was?" Mayerling demanded.

"If the poison wasn't in the sauce, which they obviously each made in different ways, and made fresh each time it was served, then what if it was in the snails themselves?" Rose said, as the idea suddenly occurred to her.  Without waiting for an answer, she headed back out to the yard, where she remembered Gabriel saying the snails were kept before their ultimate demise.  Shaw and Mayerling followed her.

The rain had tapered off, leaving a muddy, damp courtyard.  Some of the staff of the hotel had evidently been ordered back to work – the maids she had seen earlier were gone, perhaps after too much flirting with the policemen – but the restaurant's employees were still lingering there, unable to leave because of the police's orders, but also not permitted to resume their usual duties.

Ignoring the dirt that would inevitably get on the hem of her skirt, Rose crouched down to examine the snails' cage.  It was a wooden crate with a fine mesh screen over the top to prevent the escape of its inhabitants.  Carefully, she lifted up the lid to have a look inside.  The snails were what were called the _petit gris_ , the small gray species with a striped shell.  Their habitat was strewn with leaves and twigs, presumably for them to eat as well as shelter under.  Rose picked one of the creatures up to examine it, and it retreated prudently into its shell.  They seemed healthy enough, as far as she could judge such things – crawling around, as active as snails ever were.

"Where do you obtain the snails?" she asked Clouard, who was still fuming nearby.

"There is an old woman named Suzette who gathers them and sells them – first to me, and any she has left over, at the market.  I buy them every three days from her."

"Why every three days?"  Rose was curious, more than anything.

"Snails need time to purge themselves," he explained, his anger subsiding as he delved into the minutia of his craft.  "For at least three days, you must feed them clean foods, so they get rid of anything foul they may have consumed before.  I feed them on dill, because it gives the flesh a most exquisite flavor."

Rose puzzled over that for a moment, as she replaced the snail in its crate.  She had been wondering whether it was possible the snails could have fed on the toxin in the wild – if perhaps the old woman had gathered them from near the river, where oleander grew thickly – but now had to discount that hypothesis on several grounds.  If they kept the snails penned for several days and controlled their feed in order to cleanse their systems, that made it implausible that the poison would have remained in their flesh for that long.  Furthermore, if this Suzette sold her remaining crop at the market, more people than those who had dined at the hotel would surely have been poisoned.

As she pondered the matter, she picked up a few of the scattered leaves and examined them idly.  They were not dill, she was sure of that much.  She was no expert botanist, although she had a passing knowledge of plants from which one could extract useful chemicals.  As she crushed the dark green leaves between her fingers to sniff the odor they produced, she felt a slight tingling, burning sensation on her skin.  "Lieutenant," she said abruptly, remembering what Olympe had said, "I believe this is the source of the poison."  She held her hand out to show him the leaves.

Shaw sniffed them and nodded.  He was an expert at all things related to nature, and this was evidently no exception.  "Oleander, no question."      

"Someone put these in the snail's pen to ensure they would absorb the toxins," Rose said grimly, dropping the leaves back into the enclosure and wiping her hand futilely on her skirt.  It was too late – the skin had already broken out into a rash, with a few small blisters where the sap had come into direct contact.

Shaw frowned.  "There was a case I looked into, last year – oleander's a nasty business.  Even the smoke from burnin' it can kill a man."  His brow was furrowed and he scratched at his scruffy chin as if trying to recall more details.

Rose remembered Olympe saying much the same thing.  "Someone was clearing land along the river?"

"That was the one," said Shaw.  His eyes widened as something dawned on him.  "No charges were laid – it was purely an accident, as far as I could figure, even though two men were killed.  But the man who owned the land was Jerome Audemars.  And right now he's lying dead from the very same poison."

"This was no accident, then," Rose said with sudden clarity.  "This was revenge."

"It does seem that way," Shaw agreed, and spat a wad of tobacco onto the brick and mud of the courtyard, narrowly missing Maître Clouard's feet, with his carefully polished shoes and pristine white trousers.  Rose looked at her hand, still stinging where the plant's fluids had touched her.

"Hands," she muttered to herself.

"What was that, Mrs Janvier?" Shaw asked.

"The hands of the killer.  They'd be like mine – burned by the chemicals in the plant as they tore up the leaves, unless they were wearing gloves."

Shaw looked around at the assembled workers.  "There's only three of 'em wearin' gloves: the two waiters an' the feller who looks after the wine.  I suppose someone else could've brought gloves an' worn 'em just for this purpose, but that's more of a stretch."   

Rose agreed with his assessment.  Carrying and then disposing of gloves could be noticed as unusual behaviour in this busy environment where everyone was aware of everyone else's doings, but someone who habitually wore gloves might pass unnoticed.  And it narrowed down her suspects – or rather, their suspects, she amended, giving Shaw some credit.  

"Serge-Yves Delattes, Noël Marchand, and Marcelin Levasseur – step over this way, gentlemen," he ordered in his loud, nasal twang.  "We need to have a look at your hands."

The waiters and the sommelier all wore pristine white cotton gloves.  Surely, Rose thought, there would be stains on them if they had handled the leaves.  She wondered if perhaps the culprit had switched his gloves for another pair – if so, it might be all but impossible to locate the incriminating evidence now.  As Shaw and Rose approached, she tried to figure out what was nagging at the back of her mind.  Something about what Shaw had just said...

The names, she realized suddenly.  Levasseur – the same as the carpenter who had died from breathing oleander smoke.  This man could be his brother, or cousin, or perhaps no relation at all – it was not an incredibly uncommon name in New Orleans.  But nevertheless the coincidence made her suspicious.  She tugged at Shaw's sleeve, drawing his attention, and whispered, "Levasseur – like the man who died last year."

Shaw blinked at the revelation, then nodded.  "Let's start with him, then."

The gloved hands that the sommelier held out to them were perfectly white and clean.  "Nothing to see," he said with a little smirk, as though he had something to be satisfied about.

 _Fussy_ , Rose remembered Gabriel describing him. _Prissy.  Likes everything to be just so._ "What about under the gloves?"  

"Nothing except my hands," he said more tightly.  

"Let's have 'em off, even so," Shaw replied.  The man hesitated for a moment, and then bolted, making for the alley on the right side of the hotel that would lead out to the street.  His path, however, was suddenly blocked by the sharp blade a hair's breadth away from his chest, wielded by a stone-faced Augustus Mayerling.

"Put up your hands," said the Prussian swordsman in a voice like cold iron, and the man did as he was bidden.

"Goin' somewhere?" Shaw asked calmly, as he tugged off the white cotton gloves on those upheld hands.  The skin, once revealed, was blistered and red on the index fingers and thumbs.  "Take him to the Cabildo," Shaw ordered the constables standing by.

The sommelier swore and shouted as they dragged him away.  "They should have all died! All of them! Greedy rich bastards!"  His cries diminished and at last could be heard no more, to Rose's relief.  As much as she was glad that the man had been arrested instead of Gabriel, she couldn't help but feel some slight guilt that she had once again helped send someone to jail, and no doubt ultimately to the gallows.  

"So he was deliberately targeting M'sieur Audemars," Rose said, trembling with the excitement of solving the case.  "It seems like such a callous way to go about murder, that could have harmed so many other innocent people."  In an odd way, it helped her feel better.  This murderer had been indiscriminate in his attack, and lucky not to kill more than one person.  Perhaps he did indeed deserve his punishment.

Shaw shrugged bony shoulders, spitting a stream of tobacco juice.  "Sounds to me like he wasn't overly concerned with who all he harmed  so long as he got the one he was aimin' for. But I don't know why he didn't just wear his gloves to do the deed."

"He was too fastidious," Rose speculated.  "He couldn't get them dirty or he'd be reprimanded.  A man who would rather blister his own skin than besmirch his gloves."

"Maybe so," said Shaw.  "I imagine you'd best be gettin' home to your boy," he told her, leaving unsaid whether he meant Baby John or Gabriel.  "And thank you, Mrs Janvier."

"Any time, Lieutenant," she replied with a slight smile.  Shaw then barked out orders to his men to have the remaining snails in the crate, as well as the rest of its contents, taken into evidence.

Augustus had sheathed his sword again, perhaps slightly disappointed that he hadn't had an opportunity to use it more forcefully on the man who had poisoned Madeleine.  "With your permission, I will also return to my wife's side.  If you require my testimony as to anything that transpired here, you shall have it," he told Shaw, before turning to bow politely to Rose.  "We owe you a debt of gratitude, madame."

"I trust Mrs Mayerling will make a swift recovery," Rose told him.  "And please let Olympe know what happened as well."

"But of course," Augustus said gallantly.

Clouard, who was still gaping in shock at what had happened under his very nose, also had a few words for Rose.  "Gabriel – your nephew, is he?"  When she affirmed that it was so, he continued, "Tell him that I expect him back to work tomorrow." Rose nodded politely, and told the chef that she would relay the message.  As she turned to go, he shouted, "And no more improvisation with my recipes!"

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to thanking my wonderful betas MW, AD, and B, I would be remiss if I didn't thank the authors of this article, from which I drew a good deal of helpful information: http://jat.oxfordjournals.org/content/30/9/683.long
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [naryrising](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/naryrising) if you want to ask questions, make requests, or chat!


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